QUEST TV: America’s Energy Future

Episode Description

From fossil fuels to renewables, the race is on to find better ways to manage and maximize our energy sources. Tour a massive solar farm in California, investigate the impacts of fracking on Ohio’s groundwater supplies, and join Missouri university students as they compete to build the most energy-efficient house in America.

Segment Details

Watch the full 1/2 hour television episode above or watch individual segments and read accompanying articles on the following pages:

QUEST, an Emmy Award-winning multimedia science series, has a new focus on the science of sustainability.The half-hour magazine style episodes are produced by a collaboration of six public broadcasters around the country and explore a wide variety of sustainability issues related to food, energy, water, climate and biodiversity. The story segments featured in each show are introduced by on-camera host, environmental journalist Simran Sethi. The series also includes half-hour specials that focus on a single topic.
All 2013-2014 television programs can be viewed online in their entirety or as individual segments by clicking on the titles and images listed below. The programs are also broadcast in each of our six PBS partner regions including North Carolina, Ohio, Nebraska, Northern California and the Pacific Northwest. Check local listings for broadcast dates and times.

When you take into account the amount of money that is spent on energy in the US annually, approximately 6-8 Trillion dollars, that's, 200 quads at an equivalent of 8 Billion gallons of gas per Quad. These numbers were extracted from the Energy Information Agency, the EIA. They did not make it easy to get to. There were far to many different units of measurement used, BTU's to Mega Joules, and everything in between , along with missing and irrelevant data, but it has been verified by at least one other independent analyst. It is easy to see how much resistance the oil companies and the Nuclear power folks might muster.

Much of this may be new to you. I understand that, but please consider these things. You want innovation that will change the face of the planet? I think that at last count 656 patent applications can be viewed for LENR alone. On another note I added number 17, not because it generated excess energy, but because it's just damned neat that plasma is so easy to generate.

Come on Already!! It may very well be that not all of these advances will ever come to fruitiion. However at the rate new approaches to energy production are coming to the surface I am reminded of an old adage, "What man can conceive, man can achieve.". About 1 per month is showing up currently. I am betting that at least 1/2 of these birds can power a new and extraordinarily interesting world. Maybe all of them! Do not dismiss these birds.

Now here is the deal, this rattles me a little.

I ran actoss a presentation made to the Nobel Prize People on Thermionics in 1929. He was over unity. In that paper the term "Perpetuum Mobile" was used. I thought I would google it. People around the world have built so many interesting devices, motors, that ran all by themselves, using MANY curious phenomena Not the least of which is this one. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMK0dEKWJdY . The big money guys do not give one damn dam about you, me, or the rest of mankind. They may take big write offs because they put on an obfuscatory show of being benefactors, but they cling to that which is killing the earth. I'm a little rattled!

It's gotta be on this list, and the list is growing

1. Cold Fusion, also known as Low Energy Nuclear Reactions, Lattice Assisted Nuclear Reactions, Controlled Electron Capture Reaction. These technologies are all about forcing Hydrogen or Deuterium atoms into the crystal lattice of a metal such as Nickel. Once the crystal lattice of the metal nano powder has been sufficently saturated with Hydrogen excess heat is generated. This is not hard to see, as everything is still vibrating, but now all the atoms are in much closer proximity than before. The quanta mechanical explanations are not fully understood, but there are several companies and government offices that have operational devices. Good bye oil. Google LENR, NASA, Zawodny, and Bushnell. NASA loves it. Checkout this youtube video from NASA. The big question is why the DOE is dragging their heels.

2. Dense Plasma Focus goes something like this. Two cylindrical electrodes are enclosed in a glass tube after one electrode is slipped inside the other. The tube is then filled with Boron gas and high voltage is applied to the electrodes. A plasma is then produced and pulsed by a strong magnetic field. As this pulsing is increased and focused the plasmoids begin to ball up on one another. As pulsing continues a beam of electrons emanates from one end of the tube and a beam of protons from the other, with extremely high amounts of energy being produced. Google Charles Chase, Skunk Works, and Dense Plasma Focus. Watch Charles Chase on youtube.

3. Catalyzed Hydrogen is what will replace Electrolysis. Molybdenum Sulfide is but one of the substances that will trim the Hydrogen right off the water molecule with no energy being expended, releasing it to power a fuel cell and generate electricity directly. There was a graduate student by the name of Chang working in Berkeley CA on this a couple of years ago.

4. Graphene is essentially one atom thick layers of Carbon alternated between layers of insulation, such as mylar. When you get a bunch of these layers stacked up and attach electrodes to the top and bottom of the stack you have created a capacitor of another color. Extremely high values of capacitance can be arrived at. 3000 farads is what I have seen advertised, the size of a marine battery. This material can be used as a capacitor, a spectacular new form of battery, or configured as an extremely efficient solar cell. Additionally I have recently heard of work aimed at producing LENR in a Graphene environment. Ampenergo is a company that I think licensed this technology from the government. I want so much for Elon Musk to incorporate this into his new models.

5. Zero Point Energy/Energy of the Vacuum used to be a little far out for me, but now I think I've got a cursory handle on it. The process on a Quantum level is much like the process that produces Ball Lightening. When tectonic plates shift causing an earth quake occasionallly something called Ball Lightening happens. Only in Zero Point it is what happens when an Orthorhombic plane from another dimension intersects our dimension and causes a disruption, releasing energy. Here's a Moray B. King video from the Breakthrough Energy Movement.

Also a piece straight from NASA discussing something call an EmDrive utilizing RF energy at 935 Mhz to interact with the Energy of the Vacuum.

6. Acoustic Cavitation/Bubble Fusion/Sonofusion. I am not sure at all how to say anything about this, but there is a great deal published about the possibility of deriving energy using this phenomenon.

7. Muon catalyzed Fusion. Oh this is a good one!! Fermi Lab and SLAC developed a coherent beam of Muon's a couple of years ago. They shoot it into Hydrogen or Deuterium gas, and because the Muons have a negative charge equal to an electron, but are 207 times more massive than an electron they knock the electrons out of their shells around the Nucleus and the Fusion is made to happen in the atoms Nucleus. I don't know how many electron shells a beam can penetrate. But I'm betting it is more than one. Pretty good stuff…

8. HALOGEN-CATALYSED COLD NUCLEAR FUSION, yet another, not quite as much info available for this flavor.

9. Thermionic Power Generation/Thermoelectric, I heard about this just the other day. It may be that this technology will be a prime player. The devices turn heat from the sun, or anything else directly into electricity, instead of using light as photovoltaic solar cells do.

You've got to love these guys. I would think that this would have to be one of the most easily demonstrated methods of cold fusion. At least if you believe these two fellows.

11. Papp Engine. As it turns out plasma is pretty simple to make. Anyone can do it with a 12 V battery. Ever seen a simple spark while you were giving yourself a jump start to your automobiole? Within the spark, taking into account that 1% of the atmosphere is composed of Nobel gases, which go to the Plasma state within the spark.

There are no magnets to confine the plasma once it is formed, so it is allowed to expand and drive a piston. My explanation is my own, but I think its close.

12. Bloom Box. I don't know how I missed this one. All the big money is going HERE. The video is from 60 minutes a couple of years ago. Things are on a roll here with what looks like a jump for fuel cells. It amounts to thin wafers of Silicon that have been coated with different materials on each side and then stacked, much as the way you would stack Graphene layers upon one another.

From what is said on 60 minutes these things are being deployed at major .com outfits in Silicon Valley.

The following is a caption under an illustration at the above website.

SF-CIHT Cell Generates Electricity Directly from Water Freely Available in the Humidity in the Air

14. Steorn Machine. They say that this new kind of electric generator has been duplicated by a number of organizations. A key fundemental cited is "Magnetic Regauging" Ferrite materials figure in as well. I actually have some experience using ferrite material. I built Isolators and circulators for military microwave applications. Biasing a ferrite puck with magnets causes microwave energy to flow in a circular manner within the ferrite. Reverse the magnetic polarity and energy flows in the opposite direction. While I was working in the field as a technician I was told that the phenomenon was not 100% understood. Perhaps it is now. Additionaly I witnessed a couple of folks producing a little bit different kind of sintered ferrite material in the late 80's that turned out to be high temperature super conducting material. It's the symmetry of a magnetic circuit that has been the thing that has been in the way. They say they have created a means of creating a constantly asymmetrical magnetic circuit. Or, something like that. Holy Smokes it's beginning to make sense to me! On a personal note, about 30 years ago I had recurrent dreams of a machine very much like this one. A little spooky!

17. Multiplaz Welding and Cutting Tool, This doesn't generate excess heat, but it uses tap water and alcohol to make a heck of a plasma cutter. The fact that Plasma can so easily and cheaply produced is what I find interesting.

18. Optical Rectification The deal here is essentially that they have tapped the electromagnetic nature of light. After all, different colored lights have different wavelenghts and therefore different frequencies. Everything from DC to daylight and beyond is what makes up the electromagnetic spectrum. They have now figured out how to rectify these extremely high frequencies and produce direct current electricity. You rectify 60 cycle AC when you build an electrical bridge circuit of diodes to convert it to DC. Optical Rectification is a Quantum kind of thing.

20. Photoswitching This amounts to a hinged nanomolecular construct that switches from one state to the other on demand releasing energy. When the sun isn't out rechargeable solar batteries use a small electric current or a small light to start the switching back to the other state. There is some plumbing involved and a liquid medium holds thr charge.

28. Magnetic Field Regauging Some of the stuff on this list is pretty wild. Some of the websites that discuss this topic are pretty hard to swallow, but the science is catching up with recent lab results and discoveries. A little time searching on google and you will start seeing the possibilities.